Murli Manohar Joshi, the Union minister for human resources development, generally barks up the wrong tree, but for a change he has raised a valid question. It is about India’s ranking in the Human Development Index put out by the United Nations Development Programme in its annual publication, the Human Development Report. This year’s HDR is devoted to the role of democracy in fostering human development. Joshi says India’s lowly HDI rank of 124 in a list of 173 countries does not capture the contribution of democracy to human development. If the UNDP had quantified democracy and weighted the HDI with a democracy index, India would have done better than many developing countries in Asia. Joshi has a point there, but he may be among the first who will object to any quantification of democracy since this highly political concept is so culturally charged. What may define democracy for one nation may not be acceptable to another. Indeed, the UNDP was confronted with precisely this criticism when in one of its early reports it put out a Political Freedom Index. One of the elements of PFI was gay rights — a country that recognised the human rights of homosexuals was regarded as more free than one that didn’t. Many UNDP member countries objected and the PFI was dropped. Indian democracy has not performed badly. Apart from the social churning and upward social mobility, its track record on the economic front isn’t all that bad either That the quantification of democracy is fraught with serious cultural, social and political problems is brought out even in this year’s HDR. The section which discusses ‘Gauging Governance’ and puts out measures of democracy and political and civil rights has a list of six ‘objective’ and quantifiable indicators of governance and eleven ‘subjective’ indicators, that include as many as 44 highly value laden elements. The HDI was created in fact to liberate the concept of development from the narrow straightjacket of purely economic indicators. It is an attempt to add a ‘human’ dimension to the more technical notion of gross domestic product. But, as the HDR itself says, human development is larger than what the HDI captures, namely the educational, health and living standards of a people. Human development is about ‘‘the expansion of capabilities that widen people’s choices to lead lives that they value.’’ In that expansion of human capabilities and the widening of choices, democracy certainly plays a key role. Democracy, however, is not ‘‘electoralism’’ says HDR 2002. The mere fact of the regular conduct of elections does not make a society democratic. Democracy requires functioning institutions, public accountability, the rule of law, free political debate, an active civil society, the recognition of minority rights, economic freedom and such like. The most precious legacy of our national struggle for freedom and liberation from colonial rule and feudalism is our democracy. It is fashionable in some circles to deride our democracy but without the cementing factor of democratic institutions India would not have emerged a nation, a sovereign republic, and this nation will not survive if it can not remain a secular and liberal democracy. For all its faults, Indian democracy has not performed badly at all. Apart from the social churning and upward social mobility it has enabled, putting power in the hands of the hitherto disempowered, its track record on the economic front is not all that bad either. Consider the facts. For the first half of the 20th century the Indian economy grew at the rate of near zero per cent. From 1950 to 1980, the growth rate went up to 3.5 per cent per annum. From 1980 to 2000 it has been around 6.0 per cent. Per capita income increased at around 0.2 per cent per year between 1900 and 1950, at around 1.5 per cent in 1950-80 and 3.5 per cent in 1990-2000. We could certainly have done better but this is also an impressive effort. The urge to do better on the economic front has certainly gripped India which explains the fact that most people now regard an annual growth rate of even 5.0 per cent as unsatisfactory. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s warning to the nation, in his inaugural address, that to aim low is a crime reflects a growing national sentiment best captured by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s expressed desire that the target growth rate of the economy for the Tenth Plan (2002-07) period should be 8.0 per cent. Dampening this enthusiasm, the former chief economic advisor to the Government of India, Shankar Acharya, has recently written in the Economic and Political Weekly, that without wide ranging economic reforms, an improvement in government finances and stepping up of the ratio of investment to national income, it is unlikely that the economy would grow at more than 5.0 per cent in the medium term. Some may hasten to conclude that it is democracy which is coming in the way of higher growth because it is the absence of a consensus among all political parties which is preventing successive governments from pursuing the requisite policies. If 5.0 per cent is possible and 8.0 per cent is desirable then the gap can only be bridged by neutralising the impact of politics on economic governance. QED, democracy is a barrier to growth. This is a simplistic view. Rather, one can argue that India’s growth acceleration over the 20th century accompanied the greater democratisation of the Indian polity. More to the point, if democratic politics could deliver 6.0 per cent growth over the past two decades and if even this can be sustained over the next two decades, India would still be better off than with faster economic growth without democracy. Put it another way, if the choice is between a democratic India growing at 6.0 per cent and a non-democratic India (like China) growing at 9.0 per cent per annum, I’d go for the democratic alternative any day. The real challenge for India is to be able to improve on our growth performance even as we deepen and widen democracy. The 3.0 percentage point growth loss is, to be sure, not the price of freedom but of incompetent governance.
